By Hector Gonzalez
Staff Writer

January 14, 2015 -- City officials are still working to identify buildings in Santa Monica that might collapse in a major quake—the first phase of a comprehensive seismic safety program that’s been delayed as officials double-check potentially vulnerable structures against existing building permits, an official said this week.

Santa Monica’s seismic safety program, announced last February, called for officials in the City’s Building and Safety Division to inspect hundreds of residential and commercial building built under outdated earthquake standards.

In announcing the program, officials said the goal was to create a comprehensive inventory of such structures throughout the city. Based on the inventory, City Council members were expected to adopt new building regulations by this past fall.

But the process of identifying every potentially vulnerable building is taking longer than originally anticipated, said Ron Takiguchi, building officer for the Building and Safety Division.

“There is no inventory yet,” Takiguchi said Tuesday. “The inventory follows identification, after we verify records.

“To give you an example, we may identify something that looks potentially seismically hazardous, but then we look at (city) records and find that’s not the case. So we want to be sure,” Takiguchi said.

During the identification process, Takiguchi said, much of the work has focused on “soft story” residential structures — apartment buildings, townhouses and other multi-unit, wooden-framed buildings of two or more stories built atop a weak spot such as a large open garage.

Such structures are particularly vulnerable to collapse in a major quake, according to the state’s Health and Safety Code. As an example, the code cites the failure of the soft story Northridge Meadows apartment complex that collapsed in the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, killing 16 residents.

Soft story structures were permitted in California prior to 1978. Across the state, tens of thousands of soft story residential buildings have never been seismically reinforced, according a report on the Association of Bay Area Government’s website.

In Santa Monica, a first round of seismic inspections completed at the end of last year identified about 2,000 soft story structures, Takiguchi said. But some potentially vulnerable properties in certain residential zones were not accessible during the first inspections, or they did not match city records or zoning maps, he said.

“In some cases, we actually went out to some of the areas and it wasn’t clear what streets to look at versus what’s on the map,” Takiguchi said.

“In other case garage doors were closed and we couldn’t verify at that time, so we want to have a second look at some of those buildings.”

Santa Monica Mayor Kevin McKeown said council members are aware of the complexities involved in identifying all the city’s potentially hazardous structures.

“We know there have been delays,” he said this week. “We haven’t forgotten about this.”

Although some work remains in identifying vulnerable buildings, officials are now nearly finished with that process, Takiguchi said this week.

“We’re close,” he said. “It’s going to be records verification at this point.”

Records verification can also be a complex process, he said.

“We take a building identified as a potentially hazardous building and we look at the building records—when the building was built, the materials that were used, any records of retrofitting that might have happened in the past, and any plans that are associated with that building’s retrofit,” said Takiguchi.

City building officials also are working with the Structural Engineering Association of California “to determine what technical standards will be applied these hazardous buildings.”

“The important point is, we want to be very comprehensive” before presenting any final reports to the City Council, said Takiguchi. “We want to make sure that we cover all that we can.”

Source: http://www.surfsantamonica.com/ssm_site/the_lookout/news/News-2015/January-2015/01_14_2015_SM_Officials_Work_to_Identify_Quake_Vulnerable_Buildings.html

Call a plumber.
Water users who fail to cut their consumption over their 2013 totals will start seeing penalties on their bill in October, which covers their August and September usage.

The ordinance, which was finalized unanimously by City Council on Tuesday night and is meant to address the current drought, is unrelated to the proposed water rate increases, which council will consider finalizing in February.

Businesses and residents will be expected to lower their consumption by 20 percent over their 2013 usage. Residents who were already doing a good job saving water in 2013 will be protected, in theory, by a threshold. Residents of single-family homes that use fewer than 16,450 gallons every two months won’t have to worry about their 2013 totals. The same is true of multi-family residents using fewer than 8,225 gallons.

Currently, 80 percent of multi-family users and 42 percent of single-family users are falling below those thresholds.

Business won’t have a threshold – they’ll be expected to hit the 20 percent reduction – in part because, given the diversity of businesses in the city, it would be too complicated to develop a reasonable threshold, Dean Kubani, manager of the Office of Sustainability and the Environment told council on Tuesday.

Still, both businesses and residents can apply for a waiver — allowing them to reduce less than 20 percent without getting hit by penalties — if they can prove they’ve done everything they can to save water, including the installation of efficient toilets and shower heads.

The proposed penalty would be $10 for every hundred cubic feet (748 gallons) of water used over the allowance per billing period. Customers who break the allowance more than seven times in a row could be required to have a flow restrictor installed and may be hit with a $10,000 civil penalty.
Councilmember Sue Himmelrich expressed concern over the idea that users who consumed more water in 2013 will have higher allowances than those who worked to save water.

“Doesn’t the way that this program is working reward people who are really wasting a lot of water?” she asked Kubani.

“We could set everything the same for everybody,” Kubani said. “I think if we tried to do that we may have 500 people here tonight to speak about it. We’re trying to achieve a 20 percent reduction in water use and by asking everybody to achieve a 20 percent reduction in water use, that’s the way we’re proposing to do it. I think there are different ways that you can do it but this seems to be pretty equitable.”

Councilmembers pointed out that a resident could have gone on vacation for two months in 2013 and therefore have allowances that would be near-impossible to achieve. Kubani said that these residents could apply for a waiver.

Many residents, particularly those of single-family homes, said that the allowances were too burdensome and that the ordinance was too much stick without enough carrot. Single-family homes use a quarter of the city’s water and half of that water is used on landscaping, city officials have said in the past.

City officials cited numerous carrots, including a free water audit — which helps residents and businesses figure out where their water is being wasted — and rebates for residents and businesses who buy drought-resistant landscaping or rain barrels.

“We’re obviously in a very serious drought and we need to do something and I know there was some discussion about perhaps postponing the implementation of what someone called the sticks versus the carrot,” said Councilmember Gleam Davis. “And the problem, of course, is that if we do that we will have months and months and months where our water usage probably won’t be reduced as much as we would like.”

Starting in April, water users will start seeing hypothetical penalties on their water bills. The actual penalties won’t start hitting until August.

dave@smdp.com

See more at: http://smdp.com/penalties-coming-water-wasters-august/144740#sthash.7TlmGwrb.dpuf